China's Political Intransigence Rocks Hong Kong

Today, the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, issued proposed procedures for the 2017 election of Hong Kong’s chief executive, the city’s top political official. At stake is the stability—and continued viability—of the now-embattled city, a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. Activists threaten to shut down Hong Kong’s financial district in protest of Beijing’s insistence on tightly controlling elections.

The proposals, formally labeled a “Decision,” received unanimous approval from the Congress’s Standing Committee. After a public consultation period, they will be submitted to Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, where they will need an affirmative vote of at least two-thirds of that body’s 70 members.

The proposed changes would, for the first time, permit universal suffrage in Hong Kong. Voters could choose among a maximum of three candidates, each of whom must receive at least half of the votes of a nominating committee.

If the “reform package” is not approved, current elections procedures will remain in place. There is now a 1,200-member Election Committee, composed mostly of Beijing loyalists, that directly chooses the city’s chief executive.

There is significant opposition in Hong Kong to Beijing’s proposals because, as famed China watcher Willy Lam of Chinese University of Hong Kong notes, “pan-democrats” have a chance of nomination only if the threshold is reduced to 20% of the packed nominating committee.

Legislative Council approval is not now expected because the pan-democrats, who hold a little more than a third of the seats, are expected to stand firm against Beijing.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying hailed the Standing Committee’s Decision as “a historic milestone for our country” because of its adoption of universal suffrage. Pan-democrats disagreed. “Beijing can now select the candidates, puppets of course . . . two to three, they say,” said Martin Lee, a long-time democracy advocate and leading political figure, today at a rally. “But what’s the difference between a rotten orange, rotten apple and a rotten banana? We want genuine universal suffrage not democracy with Chinese characteristics.”

Today, a small rally of between 2,600—police count—and 5,000—organizers’ count—activists took place, but Hong Kong is bracing for massive civil disobedience as the weather cools and tempers flare.

It has already been a summer of discontent after Beijing signaled its intransigence on political reform by issuing its “white paper” on the subject in June. The document, overnight, transformed a flagging democracy movement into a real political force. Beijing’s hardline position, apparently meant to foreclose debate on political issues, helped encourage some 510,000 residents—organizers’ count, which appears close to the actual total—to turn out on July 1 for the annual democracy march. Pro-Beijing figures later organized much-smaller counterdemonstrations, where some participants were bused in from the “mainland” and some were paid to attend.

The Standing Committee decision is bound to trigger even more political demonstrations and perhaps unrest. Occupy Central with Love and Peace, a group formed by university professors, has promised to shut down Central, the territory’s main business district, with massive civil disobedience, primarily sit-ins, if Beijing does not permit free and fair elections.

The timing of the Occupy Central protests has long been uncertain, but it appears they will occur soon. “OCLP has considered occupying Central only as the last resort, an action to be taken only if all chances of dialogue have been exhausted and there is no other choice,” the group said in a statement issued today. “We are very sorry to say that today all chances of dialogue have been exhausted and the occupation of Central will definitely happen.”

Demonstrations of that sort, even if they remain peaceful, will take their toll on the Hong Kong. That’s almost inevitable at this point because China’s Communist Party, as Andrew Browne of the Wall Street Journalpoints out, “is likely to find itself in a protracted standoff with large sections of the Hong Kong population.”

The standoff could last a long time because senior Communist Party leaders act as if they don’t care what the people in Hong Kong think. “Many Hong Kong people have wasted a lot of time discussing things that are not appropriate and aren’t discussing things that are appropriate,” said Li Fei, deputy secretary general of the Standing Committee and Beijing’s point man on Hong Kong political liberalization. Especially given anti-China sentiment in the city these days, there’s nothing like a little Chinese arrogance to fuel a really big disagreement.

Long gone are the days when China’s senior leaders courted Hong Kong. Browne, among others, sees a lack of pragmatism in the Chinese capital. Some, including the Economist, are speculating that Beijing is actually trying to spark protests so that it can blacken the image of democracy advocates and justify a harsh crack down. There is even talk of the imposition of martial law.

Whether or not Chinese leaders are that cynical, their attitudes have evidently hardened. Why has this happened? Beijing sees less need for Hong Kong than it did in the last two decades of the 20th century, Shanghai and Guangzhou boosters would like to take their competitor down a notch or two, and general political distress in Communist Party circles rules out all attempts at compromise and most forms of subtlety.

Yet there is something far more important here. Party leaders, in short, see representative governance as an existential threat. Allow it in Hong Kong, and there is no reason it can be denied in China’s other Special Administrative Region, Macau, which is just starting to become political active. Allow it in Macau, and there is no reason it can be denied anywhere else in the People’s Republic. That’s undoubtedly why Beijing has often said it will never permit Hong Kong to be used “as a bridgehead to subvert and infiltrate the mainland.”